QueryTrackerBlog

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

The Funny Side of Writing: Insert Your Topic Here

Okay, the title is not actually
“Insert Your Topic Here.” It’s something along the lines of “How Humor Applies
to Two of Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Basics of Creative Writing.” For the handful of
people on the QueryTracker Blog Team, though, this month’s assigned title is “The
Funny Side of Writing: Insert Your Topic Here,” so a handful of people got the
joke before I explained it. It’s a bit of an inside joke – an extreme example
of the fact that all humor is inside humor.

Ooh, that’s much better. Forget that
bit about “How Humor Applies…” The real
title of this post is now The Funny Side
of Writing: All Humor is Inside Humor. Plus some stuff about Kurt Vonnegut.

Humor presents an extreme example of
Vonnegut’s advice: “Write to please just one person. If you open a window and
make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.” There is
no such thing as a joke that: (a) will not offend anyone; (b) every reader will
get; (c) can be explained to those who don’t get it in a sufficiently humorous
way those who “got it” won’t be bored; and (d) having traversed the minefield
that is (a) through (c) on this list, anyone
thinks is funny.

Humor is such an effective tool
because, done right, it creates a bond between the writer and reader that makes
the reader feel special. She “gets”
the joke, which means she is in on the little secret the joke presents. This
can happen one of three ways:

·The
very direct way that hopefully made the title of this article amusing to five
people – The existence of an actual inside joke, like a subtle literary
reference few of your readers may pick up on, making those who do feel Überspecial.

·Letting
the rest of the riffraff in on the joke – The explanation provided in the first
paragraph of this post, which is, generally, the worst option. That said, some
writers (Douglas Adams = God) explain things in such a clever way the reader
feels special having received the explanation and joining the “in crowd.”

·Building
the humor from the inside out, first giving the reader the inside information,
then making the joke it’s based on – The second paragraph of this post, which
is a different version of the same joke about the title. I’m still messing
around with the title, sharing the process of replacing the ridiculous one with
something more descriptive, but by bringing the reader (that’s you, btw) along,
I (that’s me, btw) create the insides of the inside joke: My title sucks
because I cut and pasted the stupid thing. Here I am, two paragraphs in, still
groping for a title.

Of all Vonnegut’s rules, or any rules
of writing I’ve ever seen anywhere, though, the one I think is most important
to keep in mind with respect to humor is the Fourth: Every sentence must do one
of two things—reveal character or advance the action. If I ever form some kind
of humor writing cult, THAT will be the password, and the initiation will
involve writing that on your private bits in goat blood or something else
sufficiently weird that it would be impossible to forget.

Now that I look at it, that is a
rather long sentence. Yeah, it would definitely need to be “something else
sufficiently weird.”

And I live on a farm. It’s not goat
blood I’m worried about running out of.